Please submit only technical tips that will help other TidBITS readers better use their Macs, iPhones, iPads, and related software and hardware. All product announcements should be sent to releases@tidbits.com.

Tip title*

Your tip*

URL

Enter the URL to a Web page that supports your tip.

Linked text

Enter the name of the page linked above.

Your name*

Your email*

* indicates required fields

To help us avoid automated posts and spam, please enter the words below.

When you submit a tip, you give us permission to use it. Read our terms for more details. All submissions are reviewed before publication.

Our terms: By submitting a tip, you agree to assign TidBITS Publishing Inc., a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license to reproduce, publish, and distribute your tip in connection with the TidBITS Web site and associated products in any media. You agree that you created the content you submitted, and that you have the right to assign us this license. You give us permission to use your name, but your email address won't be publicly displayed or shared. We review all submissions before publication, and reserve the right to select which submissions we feel are appropriate for our readers and to edit those we publish.

Our terms: We reserve the right to edit or delete any comment, so please post thoughtfully. We use your email address only to send you a one-time verification message confirming that you posted this comment. We also store your address to allow you to verify using other Web browsers in the future. For more info, see our privacy policy.

Track Changes Dates Reset on Save As in Word 2008

If you regularly use the Save As feature to create new drafts while working in Word 2008, you might notice that with Track Changes enabled, previously time-stamped comments and edits have their times reset to the Save As date and time. Work around this by sticking with your original file, but using Save As (or just File > Duplicate in the Finder) to make backup copies.

Netter’s Dinner Declares Success, Shuts Down

One of the longest-running traditions in the Macintosh world — the 27-year run of the annual Netter’s Dinner at Macworld Expo (now Macworld/iWorld) in San Francisco, has called an end to the festivities, based largely on the fact that, with most Mac users on the Internet and able to interact in real time, the event has clearly done its job of connecting all the right people.

Organized primarily by Mac developer Jon Pugh, the Netter’s Dinner launched in 1986 as a way for early Mac users on the nascent Internet to meet in person. When I first attended in 1992, I remember being amiably mocked by Jon during his often lengthy and always amusing audience survey — at some point in the middle, he mugged for the crowd and asked “And how many people read TidBITS?” only to be greeted with quite a number of raised hands. (And just imagine how life would have been different if the question had been met with only puzzled looks!) Other questions would reveal just who had been on the Internet the longest (a few had participated in its creation), who had the most bandwidth in their house (networking guru Bill
Woodcock always won that one), who had the most storage online (I remember answers in the terabytes back when hard disks were measured in hundreds of megabytes), and so on.

The attendees at the Netter’s Dinner were a veritable Who’s Who of the Macintosh community through the 1990s and 2000s. Marshall Clow, who worked on StuffIt Deluxe and Eudora, among much else, is the only person to have attended all 27 Netter’s Dinners, but many others were nearly as regular. Kee Nethery, who worked on the Apple Internet Servers and moved on to start the Kagi payment service, handled the money since 1995. Then there was Mark Johnson, who was responsible for starting Apple’s first Internet server (ftp.apple.com) on a Mac IIci under his desk in 1989. And until the last few years, Leonard Rosenthol, one of the main guys behind Aladdin Systems and now
the PDF Architect at Adobe, was a mainstay.

While I could never hope to list all the other wonderful people I’ve enjoyed eating with over the years at the Netter’s Dinner, it’s also impossible to avoid thinking of folks like Tim Holmes (an Apple evangelist now running his own coffeehouse), Jon Callas (who later co-founded PGP) and his wife Tamzen Cannoy (who worked with Jon on an early virtual meeting space program), Richard Ford (the Open Transport product manager, now managing his own iOS device stands and case company), Amanda Walker (then an Internet app developer at InterCon, now a security guru at Google), Alan Oppenheimer (one of the creators of AppleTalk, now the co-developer of the Art Authority iOS app), David Shayer (then a disk recovery utility developer, now
working on iOS at Apple), Raines Cohen (a BMUG stalwart), Martin Minow (a SCSI guru at Apple who died in 2000 — see “The Passing of Martin Minow,” 1 January 2001), and Tom Weyer (an Apple networking evangelist and system engineer). At its peak, the Netter’s Dinner hosted about 200 people; attendance in subsequent years dropped significantly, as the Apple industry evolved and people moved on to different pursuits.

One of the nice things about the Netter’s Dinner was how it was always the same. We’d gather in a large group as the show was closing, and then walk 1.2 miles to the Hunan on Sansome and Broadway. It’s surprisingly amusing to walk in a large group of geeks through crowded city streets, and for a few years when Jon Pugh couldn’t make it (and before there were GPS apps or even good Internet mapping services), I had the terrifying task of leading the way. After everyone had gotten drinks, Betty from the Hunan would open up the buffet-style service, and we’d jostle into line to load our plates with hot and spicy Chinese food. Once the eating slowed down, Jon or I would launch into the audience survey, taking questions from the
crowd and playing the audience for as many laughs as possible. Eventually we’d run out of questions, and everyone would trickle out to walk or cab back.

Marshall Clow summed it up nicely when we were making the decision to wrap it up this year: “A lot of fun was had; a lot of Szechuan food was consumed.”

So long, everyone, and see you on the net. I think it’s going to be more than just a geek fad.

So glad that I had the opportunity to attend one of these. It was an intense gathering. I liked Adam's description of the walk (which I recall being fast-paced — must have been a year when Adam was leading it).

There was the year we did the QTVR. And the year Amanda bought us all InterCON shirts. The year with the delicious fish on a platter. The year I flew past SF to LA and missed it. The year I met the Storm guys, who later hired me. The year Marshall signed up first (oh wait, that was ALL of them).

Let's not forget Betty, who fed us for all those years. She was sad to hear that we weren't coming, and she would welcome us back in a second.

When we started, the Hunan on Sansome at Broadway was right off the Broadway exit of the Embarcadero freeway, which came from the Bay Bridge. When that fell down in the 1989 earthquake, they got more isolated and appreciated us greatly.

If you find yourself in SF, stop in and let them warm you up with their spicy Hunan style.

I never attended Netters, but it brought back memories of MAUG on Compuserve, and its ringleader, a guy named Neil something I think. I was 76136,1457. There were MAUG get-togethers around then also, I do remember going to a couple of those. And I remember my first web experience running a text-based browser on my Mac SE using a protocol for IP over dial up whose name escapes me.

I made it to these every year I attended Macworld, which was pretty much every year from 1993-2008. Alas, change in timing of MacWorld sealed it for me. However, I did take my Chinese wife (who is from Hunan) there to eat when we visited San Francisco in 2009.

Not sure how we were allowed in the door, but my partner and I made it to a couple of Netter's Dinners and had a really fun time. We were doing stuff with Stone Design at the time, and also involved with Mac User Groups.